Washington: Pressure for a more detailed accounting of the affair that brought down CIA chief David Petraeus grew Monday amid reports that senior FBI and Justice Department officials learned of it late last summer.
The New York Times, which disclosed the latest twist in the timeline, said it was unclear whether FBI Director Robert Mueller or Attorney General Eric Holder were informed at the time.
Key members of Congress demanded a fuller explanation of an affair that could have involved a national security breach, angrily complaining they were left in the dark until just before the scandal broke on Friday.
“It just doesn’t add up,” Peter King, the top Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee, told CNN on Sunday. “I have real questions about this. I think a timeline has to be looked at and analyzed to see what happened.”
Dianne Feinstein, the Democratic chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, also said “absolutely” she would pursue why the FBI failed to notify leaders of the congressional oversight committees.
“We received no advanced notice. It was like a lightning bolt,” she said on Fox News Sunday.
Petraeus had been scheduled to testify Thursday at closed door congressional inquiries on the September 11 attacks on the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya, but he now will be replaced by acting CIA Director Michael Morrell.
But Feinstein said the Senate Intelligence Committee could decide to ask Petraeus to testify.
The scandal has shocked and surprised friends and associates of the retired general, a celebrated military leader who played pivotal roles in the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan before assuming the helm of the CIA 14 months ago.
He admitted to the extramarital affair in a resignation message to the CIA’s work force on Friday, calling the lapse of judgment “unacceptable” for a husband and leader. He has been married to his wife Holly for 38 years.
President Barack Obama learned of it two days after the US elections, according to the White House, and accepted his resignation the following day.
In the US military, adultery can be considered a crime. As CIA director, Petraeus was a civilian but the potential security breach left him open to blackmail.
Steven Boylan, a retired army colonel and former Petraeus spokesman, said his former boss told him over the weekend that the affair with Paula Broadwell began about two months after he became CIA director and ended four months ago.
“He is devastated, you could say, and you could also say that it’s going to take a long time for the family or sometime for the family to get through this, but they will,” Boylan told NBC’s “Today Show.”
It all unraveled when a Tampa woman went to the FBI in the early summer after she began receiving threatening emails accusing her of a flirtation with the general, the Washington Post said.
A government official told The New York Post that the emails contained such language as: “I know what you did,” “back off” and “stay away from my guy.”
US media identified the other woman as 37-year-old Jill Kelley, a “social liaison” to an air force base in Tampa who had a longstanding friendship with Petraeus but no official status in the military.
The FBI traced the emails to Broadwell, a 40-year-old former army major and mother of two who had written a glowing biography of Petraeus, and discovered sexually explicit emails from Petraeus indicating they were having an affair.
The Times said that sometime in late summer lower level Justice Departments official notified supervisors that the case had become more complicated.
The attorney general’s guidelines require that headquarters be notified whenever they are looking at a “sensitive investigative matter,” including cases involving domestic public officials.
That was much earlier than previously known, raising questions about when top administration officials knew about the finding, and, with US elections looming, what they may have done about it.
Kelley said in a statement that her family and the Petraeuses had been friends for five years. Her husband Scott is an oncologist.
“We respect his and his family’s privacy and want the same for us and our three children,” she said in the statement sent to ABC News.
Broadwell lives in North Carolina with her radiologist husband Scott and their two young sons.
The Petraeus scandal has left Obama with a big hole to fill on his national security team at a time when he is also expected to be replacing his secretaries of state, defense and treasury.
One name being floated as a possible Petraeus replacement is John Brennan, the White House counter-terrorism adviser and a CIA veteran who has played an instrumental role in Obama’s drone war against Al-Qaeda militants.
Others believe Morrell, the acting director, may be asked to take on the role permanently.
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